Editor’s Note: A longtime journalist, Margo Howard went into the family business (her mother was the fabled Ann Landers) in the 1990s as Dear Prudence. Her broad experience and understanding of human nature provide answers for the troubled — and entertainment for everyone else. Margo’s advice column, Dear Margo, appears twice a week — on Thursdays and Fridays — on wowOwow.com.

In the grand tradition of Paris Hilton and Brandon Davis, another nobody is making a play for celebrity. Levi Johnston was said to be in NYC at a chi-chi place with two bodyguards. Bodyguards! Remarkable when you stop to think that he is only known for … well, we all know what he’s known for. It’s quite a strange world, don’t you think, when that puts you in the category of being a celebrity? This kid is also shopping a book. Like his virtual ex-mother-in-law, one cannot avoid the thought that it might be good if he read a book before writing one.

I have written about this general subject before (in The New Republic) and decided a suitable name for the ink given to people of no achievement is "Celebridreck." Covering silly kids has spread like a societal athlete’s foot into many areas of American media. These "famous people" have gone crazy … with our help. There is a chance that I take this view because I am no longer a poulet printemps … but I don’t think so. The irony was not lost on me, years ago in Chicago, when I was out to dinner with Jonas Salk – who went totally unrecognized in the restaurant. Just before we left, Tab Hunter appeared, and, of course, was mobbed.

There is no disputing that the public has always been awestruck by the famous. The problem now, however, is that the standards for fame have gone to hell, and these days everybody and his dog want to be in the limelight simply because the perks seem like fun. B-list performers, for example, now go everywhere with an "entourage" – including, of course, bodyguards. I remember when I lived in West Los Angeles seeing Cary Grant walking around doing chores – and he was by his lonesome. Go figure.

Along with the dollar, we’ve experienced a regrettable devaluation of celebrity. Anyone over 30 cannot help but wonder: What the hell happened? The news-ingesting public is bombarded with fake news of the faux famous, but who are these people? Did the mainstream media purposely dumb things down? This is a chicken-and-egg debate, to be sure, trying to figure out how a bunch of anorexic, addled, addicted nobodies morphed into household names. Did the press lead us down this loony path, thinking it profitable? Or did the paying customers make known their yen for drivel? Could people be so depressed by national and personal problems that they get a media-delivered serotonin fix by keeping tabs on people who think going to parties is a job? Might celebridreck be taking the place soap operas used to occupy as diversions from dull lives – but with real people? There has certainly been a sea change in how you get to be a celebrity. Actions formerly disdained because they were criminal, shameful or, at the very least, déclassé, now make their practitioners into public figures. These days, attention is a loopy kind of Alice-in-the-looking-glass reward for bad behavior – and it lasts way longer than 15 minutes. It is now possible to achieve celebrity status by assaulting employees, entering rehab or screwing for posterity courtesy of your video cam. Whereas a wayward rich kid or round-heeled bimbo used to rate a passing mention in the public prints – maybe – now these unfortunates are catnip for journalists. The magic carpet for the publicity hungry is now red and so heavily trafficked as to have lost all meaning. I, frankly, don’t give a rat’s ass about Sir Paul’s marital mistake or Lindsay Lohan’s dance in and out of dry-out tanks. Good celebrity gossip, like the celebrities, just ain’t what it used to be. Perhaps the whole situation can be summed up with this joke: A middle-aged woman was reminiscing that, when she and her friends were young, they all wanted to look like Elizabeth Taylor. Now they all do.